


The Internal Darkness

by brodylover



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Ableism, Asylum, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Manipulation, Gore, Manipulation, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Vomit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 12:09:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12232527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brodylover/pseuds/brodylover
Summary: A re-telling of The Evil WIthin from Joseph's point of view, seeing what he went through when he wasn't with Sebastian. Tags will be updated per chapter. May have some relationships between Joseph and Sebastian, Ruvik, and/or Kidman, but I'm not sure yet.





	The Internal Darkness

“All units, all units; 11-99, expedite cover code 3. Beacon Mental Hospital.” Amanda’s voice buzzed over the radio before the slight static clicked off.   
Connelly was quick to answer the call, quicker than usual. Joseph had noticed that he tended to pick up his usual slack a bit when Juli was with them. “184 copy; code 3. ETA 3 minutes.” He turned on the sirens and turned right at the next intersection. They’d just been on their way back to the station, ready to fill the night with paperwork for a case that had taken too long to finish.   
“Copy 184.” Amanda confirmed before leaving them and every police officer in Krimson City to their duty.   
Connelly looked back at them, at Juli primarily, through the rearview mirror, still facing the road. “Sorry, detectives. I know you’re just coming off a case but I’m afraid we’re gonna have to make a quick detour.” His attention was on Sebastian by the end of the sentence, as if he didn’t want to be caught looking.   
Joseph’s brows knotted. “Sounds serious. Is it a riot?”  
“Call went out just before I picked you up. Said it was ‘multiple homicides’. Half a dozen units already on-scene.”   
He already knew then? Joseph tried to relax in his seat but he wanted to press. Connelly should have told them as soon as he’d stopped for them. A multiple homicide wasn’t something that happened every day, not even in a big town like Krimson. If anyone was needed, it was going to be the detectives.   
“Maybe it’s the ghost of that doctor who went schizo and chopped up all those patients.”  
Joseph scowled but bit his tongue. Schizophrenia wasn’t something to joke about, especially when it was being connected to murder. That hospital already had enough problems and the stigma against the patients wasn’t helping.   
“That’s not what happened.” Against his better judgement he was sitting forward, even though it made the light headache in the back of his head start to pulse. “Some patients disappeared. Some kind of scandal?” He didn’t know all of the details; he hadn’t been on the case. He knew that it wasn’t murder though.   
“Still, gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?”  
Sebastian turned, looking over the back of his seat at Joseph, looking haggard and tired, but not too unusual. “Joseph, you think there’s a connection?”  
“It’s a possibility,” he admitted, “I believe the records were sealed.” He waved his notepad regardless, always on hand. He was sure that he’d taken some notes on it but the chances that they were in that specific notepad were slim.   
“Anyone on-scene, respond…” came over the radio.   
Sebastian picked it up before Connelly even had the chance.   
“Dispatch this is Detective Castellanos in 184, what’s the situation, over?”   
Juli was silent, as was Joseph, but he had a feeling that her silence wasn’t based off of a growing pounding in her head, going from the base of the skull towards the temples. The rain pelting the roof was starting to sound too loud.   
The static over the radio got stronger, pulling at the fibers of the headache, making it blossom under Joseph’s scalp. “184 be advised. Some problem… at Beacon Memorial… radio.”  
“Is there any-“ Sebastian started but a piecing sound came from the radio, making him clench his face and make a pained sound. It was high pitched and shrill, tearing at the last nerves in Joseph’s head. He squeezed his eyes shut and grit his teeth against it.  
“Jesus!” Connelly grimaced, shrinking back from the sound, taking the wheel with him. They swerved, the motion made all the worse by the slickness of the road. Joseph opened his eyes, clutching at the handle on the door as if he could will the car to be still, noticing the odd sense of calm that Juli showed. Everyone else was reacting to that godawful sound, but she was just sitting there, her arms crossed over her chest, as if they were driving on a sunny day, listening to music, no homicides or screeching sounds to worry about.   
The sound faded and Connelly took control once more. They were lucky that there weren’t many cars out on the road.   
Joseph took off his glasses, trying to shake away the pain in his head, his fingertips against his temple.   
“Junior Detective Kidman, any thoughts?” Sebastian asked, as calm as if nothing had happened. No one mentioned the sound, nor seemed to have any lasting pain from it, aside from him.   
“Nothing yet.” was all Juli said, distant as ever. She turned towards the window. “I’m sure we’ll know everything once we get there.”  
Connelly stopped the car in front of the gate. There was nowhere else he could go. Inside, there were already too many police vehicles and ambulances. Some of the vehicles still had their lights flashing and their doors open, letting the interiors soak.  
“What do you make of it?” Joseph inquired, nodding up at the foreboding building. His brain was starting to work again, the pain beginning to recede.  
“Connelly, contact dispatch and let them know what’s happening.” Sebastian took the lead, like usual, not even turning to see if Connelly could hear him. The officer was just barely getting out of his seat to take a look at the mess ahead of them. “Joseph, Kidman, you’re with me. We’re going to have a look around.”  
“Right…” Juli stated. There was no other way to describe how she said it. She was just saying a word, was good at just saying words, with no emotion to back them up. Joseph eyed her quizzically but didn’t say anything, seeing Sebastian start towards the main doors, his old coat getting a dark pattern from the rain.   
It was wrong. Everything about this was against protocol. There was caution tape up to keep civilians away, but it wasn’t attached to anything useful and, worse than that, there were no people. There was the chance that all the officers were inside but the call had stated that the homicide was already done, there was no one there to save. Even if there were, surely they’d be able to hear the officers at work.   
Sebastian got to the door first, put a hand on the hard wood. It moved easily, no one had even locked it up to keep passerby out and the stench wafted out without hesitation. Joseph was at his side in an instant, looking through the crack to get a bearing before seeing the horrid nature of what was awaiting them.   
“It smells like blood,” he stated, pulling out his pistol. It wasn’t until he said it that he realized it was true. There were bodies in there, he could see bits of them even from this distance, but he couldn’t smell them. They should have smelled putrid, gasses and meats that weren’t meant to be exposed. It didn’t smell like a crime scene.   
“Alright, stay sharp.” Sebastian nodded, watching him open the other door and head inside.   
He led with his pistol drawn, looking for any movement. He stayed close though. If there was movement, he was going to need help taking it on nonlethally.   
Juli appeared beside Sebastian, their silent shadow. She had been with them a month now, their attractive but odd trainee. Joseph had caught himself looking at Juli almost as much as Connelly did, but he still hadn’t figured out how she always appeared in places. It was almost supernatural.   
“We’re going to check it out. Don’t let anyone else through this door.” Sebastian pushed his way in.   
“I can be another set of eyes.” Juli argued, if her monotone could be called arguing. She sounded flat, even for her. There was something off about her today, had been since they met up that morning.   
“We don’t know what’s happening here. You’re our backup.”   
The floor was a mess of blood and bodies, broken and open, left where they were. They looked as if they had all just dropped where they were, the wounds all wrong for a mass shooting or any other style of fight that could take out so many people all at once. Sebastian went from one to the next, silently studying the corpses, which had long gashes through their limbs. The wounds looked like they were caused by a large animal, but that wasn’t possible.   
Joseph headed towards the desk, where the secretary still sat, blood pooling in her clavicle from a torn open throat. There had to be some kind of record, some reason for so many patients to be out in the entrance of the hospital instead of deeper inside. None of the bodies belonged to doctors or orderlies, they were all patients, nurses, and the secretary. There had to be a reason for it.   
He hadn’t even looked at the scattered notes before he heard a pained cough, the first sound outside of their own.   
“Did you hear something?” he asked.   
Sebastian didn’t reply.  
The door to the security room was open, just slightly, and Joseph darted in, letting his gun lead him.   
“Someone alive in here!” he called out, seeing the bleeding doctor slumped against the wall.  
Sebastian knelt at the man’s side, a hand on his shoulder. Joseph could have done that, should have, and he cursed himself for not. Sebastian was always more hands on than he was, but there had been a time in which he was a better help to people one on one, not just to the whole.   
“Are you injured? What happened here?” Sebastian asked.   
The man gaped, not looking at either one of them.   
“Can’t be real…” he murmured to himself, possibly not even realizing that they were there with him. “Impossible… Ruvik is…” and then he slumped forward, his breathing slowing. Joseph was on his knees in an instant, the hand he was cursing for being too slow finally in action, helping the stranger not fall further onto the blood splattered floor.   
“I’ve got him.” Joseph promised, turning to Sebastian and seeing the screens, the still recording camera, over his partner’s shoulder. “The security cameras might tell us something.”  
Sebastian hesitated, but went to the controls. He fiddled with them for a while but Joseph wasn’t paying him any mind. The doctor in his hands was more important, the only living person they’d seen within the building, the only person who might have answers for them aside what the cameras could show them. Joseph trusted recordings more than words, but the security cameras couldn’t catch everything.   
“What the hell?” Sebastian drew his attention back to the present, but he didn’t have time to see what confused Sebastian so.   
The glass shattered, the screens all bursting as glass rained down upon them. Joseph flung his arms over the doctor, yelping for Sebastian, as the room was plunged into darkness. He could feel the shards of glass on his shoulder and back, mixed into his hair. It shouldn’t have been so dark, the rest of the lobby had been so bright, even with the rain outside the skylight had given them more than enough to see by. Now it was like they were all deep in a basement it was so dark.   
Slowly, a light flickered on, just one, somewhere far off. Joseph turned towards it, expecting a lightbulb or the flickering of Sebastian’s lighter. Instead, the light took the shape of a person, far down the hallway that they illuminated.   
Joseph turned to Sebastian, to check on him, but there was nothing but the flickering figure. Joseph called for him, but there was no response. Even under his elbows, the doctor was gone. He was all alone in that place.   
“Sebastian?” Joseph called out, unable to hide the panic in his voice. His partner had been right there next to him. Now he was nowhere. There was no one except for the flickering stranger, who had started to walk down the corridor. They would take a few steps and then vanish, flickering back into being a few feet closer.   
Joseph couldn’t look away from them, there was nothing else to see, and what he saw didn’t make any sense. It had to be a prank or some kind of optical illusion. There was no way that someone was teleporting towards him, there couldn’t be a being made out of light.   
The man was pale though, even if he hadn’t been in black and white, static and glow. His clothing was clean, a button up shirt tucked into white slacks. His face was sharp, angular, most of it wrapped in heavy bandages. He didn’t speak until he was right up to Joseph, too close for comfort, a blink and he’d appeared, only a few inches from Joseph’s face.   
“I wasn’t expecting someone so soon,” the man tilted his head, taking a step back to look Joseph over. “I wonder how much of a use you have.”  
“Where am I?” Joseph demanded, trying to calm himself. His pistol was still in hand, but he kept it at his side. “Did you do this?”  
The man smiled, a small little thing. “If I had done this, I wouldn’t be a victim of its machinations, would I? No, there’s someone else, working behind the scenes.”  
“Am I hallucinating?” Joseph put his free hand to his head, the headache from the ride over getting stronger once more.   
“None of this could be real, right?” the man looked around at the darkness, “For all intents and purposes, I would suggest that you treat everything you see as real.”  
“Who are you?” Joseph pressed, setting the disturbing nature of what he was experiencing to the side. The man wasn’t going to give him any information about this place.   
The man flickered heavily. “I’m someone like you, trapped in this place. I’m a puppet of those behind the scenes. You have to understand, what I do, it’s out of what they make me do. If I hurt you, it’s because they’re making me hurt you.”  
Joseph squinted, trying to read the stranger. He couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not, couldn’t even make sense of what the truth was, his words so close to being a riddle in this place that made no sense already.   
“Who’s controlling you?” Joseph asked, reaching out to touch the man, his free hand going to his pale thin shoulder. The man reeled back though, as if afraid Joseph’s touch would burn and corrupt.  
“They’re scientists, at heart, as was I.” he elucidated, “They’ve created this place to see what I would do, what everyone who fell into this place would do. I am more curious about what you will do.”  
Joseph kept his hand raised, too used to trying to touch Sebastian when he was in the throes of his own self-inflicted agony, keeping the hand extended as an offering for some kind of lifeline. This stranger didn’t seem the kind to take it though. “What I will do?”  
“Help me, if that’s possible. You are going to want to get out of here and that, that is something I have been needing for a long time.”  
Joseph nodded, “Yeah, yes, I’ll help you get out of here.” He couldn’t just leave this person, even if he hadn’t given his name. He knew about this place, maybe knew about what had happened at Beacon. Joseph would do what he could.   
His eyes went wide, looking over Joseph’s shoulder. Joseph turned as well, but his head, pounding now, the headache suddenly worse than any migraine he’d ever heard of, so loud and sharp that he could hardly see, was clutched roughly in one large hand, impossibly large. He was forced to look forward, seeing the blur of what was the stranger’s ghostly form, backing away from him, possibly in terror. Joseph opened his mouth to call out but then, on top of the pain in his head, was a sharp digging stab in his neck.   
He was released and the headache started to fade. He was just able to see the shine of a thick syringe being pulled away from him before everything went sideways. His legs felt hollow, his arms heavy. Everything felt far away and he fell to his knees. Soon, all he could feel was the headache and his pulse, one feeding into the other.  
He was slightly aware that the man was gone. There was no light now. Everything was black.   
Then the floor gave way and, even though he couldn’t see it, he could tell that he was falling. 

There was a horrible gloppy splash as he connected to the world once more, cold wetness soaking through his suit and clinging to him, making him heavy. He pulled himself up, spitting out a thick glob of what was in his mouth, finding it tasting of blood. Chunks of something, wet but not liquid splattered on him from above.   
Slowly there was a loud thump and a stadium light came on, somewhere far off, hardly illuminating the room. Joseph pulled off his glasses and wiped at the lenses, but his hands were as filthy as the rest of him. He could hardly see anything. Another of those sounds and another light came on, more and more of them coming until the room was flooded.   
All he could see was red. All he could smell was blood. There was that awful dripping too, some of it liquid, some of it viscous, landing on him.   
He pulled off his gloves before trying again to rid his face and glasses of the thick liquid. This time it worked and he found himself wishing he couldn’t see at all.   
He was in blood. It wasn’t just a bit of blood in the water but an entire pool of blood and pieces of gore floated around him. Blood and pieces of flesh were raining down on him, some machine above grinding through bone and organs. He tried not to, but couldn’t stop himself from vomiting, the bile mixing the gore surrounding him.   
He could hear someone shouting, crying out for help, but then the spinning blades of the grinder above him grew louder and more liquified person rained down on him. He moved, the motions slow, wading through the gore, his own bile spreading around him, soaking into his vest.   
He pulled himself up out of the pit, his arms straining as the wetness clung to him, making his body heavy. He was breathing hard, hands on his knees, just until he was strong enough to keep going. There was a door along the wall and he pulled himself towards it, feeling bile and pain lancing his throat. The agony cracking his skull had receded somewhat but it was replaced heavily with a stretching, thrumming, lightning sharp pain that traveled through his neck. The prick of the center of it was the injection point, now infected with the filth from the pool, hot and swollen to the touch.   
He was still in the hospital, he had to be. It didn’t look much like Beacon, but the walls were the same and there were wheelchairs, IV stands, and strange medical equipment stashed in strange places. It was filthy, not as bad as the room he’d just escaped from, but it was still not hospitable. There was trash everywhere and the building looked like it had been abandoned years before.   
He traveled through the halls, into rooms, old office space and disorganized storage rooms. Doors were locked or, more often, broken, as if they were too large for the doorframes. He pushed at them all, calling out for Sebastian or anyone else every once in a while. He could hear someone breathing behind some of the doors, but they did not respond when he called out.   
There were papers strewn about on some of the desks and Joseph tried to understand them but they were hard to read, as if they weren’t quite in English. It was worse than if they were just medical jargon, but letters seemed to change when he wasn’t looking at them, making what he thought he had read something else entirely.   
There was a door at the end of one of the halls and not only was it cleaner than the rest but it was unlocked. Joseph called out for Sebastian once more before pushing through it. It led to nothing more than another hallway, the floor made of a rusted grate. He could hear Claire de Lune somewhere, slightly warped and popping as if it were from a vinyl record. There was a chopping sound as well, and the smell of blood and viscera, but Joseph was covered in so much of it that it was hardly noticeable.   
His ankle hit something. He felt the snap more than heard it. An alarm sounded, a deep beeping. The chopping sound stopped immediately, replaced with a surprised grunt. Following that was the sound of a chainsaw revving up.   
Joseph was ready to run before the man, a bit portly, dressed in torn jeans and a yellow stained shirt, a mask that looked like a bear trap had been shoved onto his face before being hammered smooth, made his way up the stairs to the small corridor, the chainsaw raised over his head.   
“Fuck.”  
Joseph was tired, his legs not wanting to move, but they still carried him as he raced back the way he’d come, slamming into the door behind him.   
He paused, too long, outside the door. He was just here, it had been a dark hall, somewhat open, with barred over windows and doors along the wall that looked as if they belonged in a prison more than a hospital. Now it was a much more narrow corridor, well-lit in a sickly brown light. There was the scraping of metal on metal, screeching down the walls.   
Joseph bit his lip and darted forward anyway, knowing that no matter where he was going, the direction that didn’t have a strange masked figure wielding a chainsaw was the better choice. The man slammed into the door behind him as soon as he’d started moving again, the chainsaw scraping along the metal of it, making a terrible scrape, a shrill sound that made Joseph raise a hand to one of his ears.   
He hadn’t gotten far before the floor was shuddering beneath him, large panels of it falling into spinning contraptions that whirred underneath the floor. They looked like the heads of soil crumblers, moving fast enough to shatter the wood of the flooring and spray chunks of it out with no fear of any getting trapped in the gears.   
Joseph slipped and kicked out, trying to regain balance. There were still long planks, what had held up the flooring before, and it was something close to a miracle that Joseph was on one.   
He heard the chainsaw wielding man growl in a somewhat victorious manner, propelling him forward. He had to run, to get out of there as fast as he could. The planks were thinner than one of his feet though and the fear of falling into the terrible machines below kept him moving at a crawl. The masked man seemed even less dexterous than he was though, there shouldn’t have been a problem. He could outwalk the stranger on this sort of footing.   
Or so he thought. He was focused on his footing, not looking back at the man that he’d assumed was having as much, if not worse, luck. He didn’t know that the stranger was drawing closer, that he wasn’t slowed down half as much as would be expected, as if he knew this place better than anyone had any right to.   
Joseph only realized how close he was when his shoulder shattered in a torrent of agony, fire slicing into him, his own blood spraying out to mix with what had already stained his once crisp clothes. He screamed, unable to hear it or anything else. All he could hear was the chainsaw as it tore through him. He was distantly aware that his feet weren’t on the ground, that his back was arching, his hands spasming as one of his lungs filled with blood, the chainsaw continuing its unrelenting path through his body.   
He writhed and wriggled, ruining the clean path of the saw, making the cut jagged and impossible to stitch back up. It didn’t matter if he could stitch up the wound. He was dead. He knew that. There was no way he could survive this.   
His foot connected with something and there was a grunt, the saw turning off, still inside of him, the teeth poking out through the front of his shirt. The kick had landed somewhere vital as his attacker fell backwards, a foot slipping off the plank. Joseph thudded forward, splayed over the plank, clutching it to keep from falling into the machines, blood pouring down him, his mouth full of it.   
He was sprayed with the blood of the masked man, just closed his eyes to not get anything worse in there, to not see as the body was ripped to pieces beneath him. He kept his eyes closed for a long time, just let himself bleed out, the fire fading away to nothingness, a terrible numbness consuming him.   
There was a ding.   
Joseph opened his eyes, turning to see the elevator at the end of the plank. It looked clean and inviting. He dragged himself up, limped and dragged himself towards it, his hands holding onto the chainsaw to keep it from hurting him further. He didn’t know how he wasn’t dead yet, but the fact that he was made him think he shouldn’t remove it. It was probably keeping him alive somehow.   
He fell to his side once he was in the yellow light of the elevator, rolling over to let the wall of it take some of the weight of the chainsaw. He closed his eyes once more, letting himself succumb to unconsciousness. He was going to die, but at least he would do it somewhere a bit nicer. 

“It’s alright, I’m here. I’m never going to let you go.”

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Joseph was standing in the center of it, body whole and clean. He looked down himself, eyes wide, trying to understand. He was a ghost, he had to be. There was no way that he could have survived. His own dead body wasn’t laying at his feet though, there was no blood or even the chainsaw around. He was just healthy.   
The only sign that anything had happened at all was the itching pain in his neck and the creeping headache that was trying to make its way through his scalp once more.   
He stepped out of the elevator, finding himself in a clean part of the hospital. It looked like it was close to the lobby. The only thing amiss were the bodies. There were three of them, laying in pools of their own blood, wearing the navy uniforms of the Krimson City police force.   
He made his way towards them. There was no chance that they were alive but, then again, there was no chance that he was either. It made him think there was a chance.   
There was a voice, in the elevator, the voice of a child. It was as impossible as the rest of it. The boy had sounded so sad though, as if it had actually been Joseph that he was crying over. He wondered if the boy was here, somewhere in Beacon. He wanted to find him, wherever he was. He’d sounded extremely close.   
Joseph started walking, either to check on the officers or find that child he wasn’t sure. He didn’t get far though, before the entire world started to rumble, a horrible earthquake shuddering through it. Joseph started to run again, knowing that he had to be out of the building. It was old, it was going to come down.   
He made it past the officers, ducking through a door and into the security room. Sebastian was gone, as was that doctor. Everything else was just the way it had been before the world had stopped making sense. All of those bodies were still there, bloody and clawed, laying in heaps in the lobby.   
Dust fell from the roof, another lurch threatening to knock Joseph to the bloody floor. He raced to the door, tearing it open.   
And stopped.  
The quake had torn through Krimson city. Just outside the door was a cliff, plummeting down into nothingness.


End file.
